In-house creative services teams with an hourly chargeback model must track their time—often to the quarter-hour increment. The discipline of time tracking can be off-putting for many teams at first, but the advantages of time tracking can’t be ignored, and teams generally support the practice once they understand the potential outcomes. The advantages are so great, that it even makes sense for creative services teams who aren’t chargeback departments to track project time. Time tracking can support staff justification, resource planning, client process changes, project forecasting models, and more. In addition, time tracking provides Creative Executives with quantitative data to speak to their manager and CFO in concrete terms they understand and require for business decisions.

Jackie Schaffer is VP/General Manager for Cella, where she and her team specialize in optimizing operations at in-house creative organizations.  They partner with Creative and Marketing Executives and their teams to evaluate, develop, and execute successful:

• strategic plans and vision statements,
• organizational designs,

career pathing strategies,

• process improvement models,
• metrics-based performance models,
• systems and technology strategies

For more information on Cella, visit www.cellaconsulting.com or email Brendon Derr at [email protected].